Whisperings from Whispered Pearls

My roommate, a dear, sweet woman, is far more social than me. But yet again today, we had another discussion about “I don’t get this Twitter thing.” I’ve been trying to get her to thrive on Twitter the way I do, but she doesn’t even understand the basic concept of it. Given how social and gregarious she is in first life (far more than me), this kinda blows my mind.

So while we were talking about it, a concept I’ve been playing with came to the forefront.

I have two Twitter accounts, both packed full with 2000 people that I’m following. Initially I considered just filling up an account with 2000 and moving on to the next one, to whatever suited my needs. But this has proved to be impractical. To say nothing of the confusion, if someone is on one list and not the other; or mistakenly on both. So, trust me, multiple accounts really doesn’t work, unless one is for business, one for pleasure, which is how I tried to structure them initially.

But what I found, in using them, is that I gravitated much more to the personal one (@michebella), only checking the business one (@michebel) on weekends or through my iPhone. The personal one, I’d use daily.

And also, and I was trying to explain all this to my roommate today, the personal one I care for like a rosebush. I am constantly pruning and caring for it. I am strictly vigilant about those that I’m following. When I first started (both accounts), I just ran helter skelter, adding as many folks as I could. I wanted to get up to that 2000 number, thinking that was the point, after all.

It isn’t.

Sure you want to have lots of followers, and usually having 2000 will get you close to 2000 following you. On my personal account, I currently have 1400 following me, and can’t seem to get it past that number. Oddly, on my business account, I quickly added the 2000 and got over 2000 following me. (I still don’t understand that.)

It all started this morning with a discussion of Mafia Wars, and why I think it’s rude to one’s Twitter stream. My roommate’s retort was: “Well, they are all just writing about what they had for breakfast anyway, what difference does it make?” (The usual thing from those who aren’t really using Twitter the right way.) But it made me think of my business account, and how in a recent perusal, I had the same frustration that my roommate was having.

The reason I wanted to write this column is because I think this is really key. Part of really GETTING Twitter, I think, is making your Twitter stream work for you. Meaning getting value, as much as possible anyway, out of each and every person you’re following.

People bounce others for many reasons. It could be that they are always talking about sports and you don’t care about that. Or they fall on the opposite side of the political spectrum than you. The important, even KEY, thing here is that you don’t sit there, frustrated, as my roommate does, and bemoan, oh this is stupid. You bounce them. And add someone who does provide value to you.

I’m not saying that every little nugget I put out there in the Twitter stream is golden. Or that anyone’s is, for that matter. But it really is like buildng a friendship. You take the good with the bad, and hope that overall, it’s a good experience.

I feel very strongly that everyone should have at least 100 people they are following, because if not, you get the same crap from the same people over and over. No one is that interesting.

But once you get up toward 250+, you get more of the concept of a stream, an organic flow of ideas and thoughts. It’s easy to scroll past those that don’t interest you. Less than that, you’re just left thinking that it’s all stupid.

Look at it this way. You have the whole world in front of you, like one huge dinner party. Who are you going to talk to? and why? whose advice are you going to seek out? who do you want hanging around just cause they have a cute turn of phrase? And if you’re now saying, well, Michelle, I don’t KNOW the whole world, I have no idea! This is what Follow Fridays are for.

Those who understand and stay on Twitter, regularly participate in Follow Fridays. Many have explained it better than me, but in short, you have people you value on your list. On Friday, they will tell you who they have on their list that they really like (for whatever reason). So add them.

Or at least check them out and then add them. This is how your list can grow every week, organically, with people you find interesting. Cause very likely those you find interesting will have interesting friends too.

But don’t SETTLE for a crappy list and just moan about it. If people are swearing too much, or flashing too much nudity, or whatever you hot buttons are: unfollow them.

When I settle down to my Twitter stream, it is a pleasant blissful place. I get inspired, enlightened, calmed. I learn things I don’t know. I hear about the latest news. I hear what others think about the latest news. Some friends drop songs off that they like.

Here’s the thing. Just like any good party, you don’t have to linger on someone talking about their foot surgery or their mom’s constipation. You go on to the next one, or, if that’s all they talk about, you unfollow them.

It’s your Twitter stream. Make it grow, make it flower, make it work for you. That, I think, is what those masses leaving Twitter don’t get. They expect it POOF! to be this amazing thing. You really have to work at making it amazing. But once you do, you won’t want to go back to just watching crap scroll by, I promise you.

Now if I could only convince my dear roommate of this. Sigh. I’ll keep you posted.

In response to this blog post:

http://blog.teamnimbuswest.com/2008/11/why-social-networking-locally-and-digitally-can-be-a-bad-idea/

I have this to say:

Boy, do I disagree with this premise.

First of all, perhaps 148.7 is the maximum number of relationships someone could have in 1998, according to some anthropologist (and even that I disagree with). But a lot has changed in the interim 11 years.

Things just don’t work the way they did in 1998. We are an accelerated culture. Things are moving faster, our communication methods move faster, we get and lose friends (and social contacts) faster.

Perhaps you could argue that those few friends whom you could sit around the coffee table with, pouring out your soul are few and far between (as you do state later in the article), but I really don’t agree with that either.

The nature of our interaction has changed with this new technology too.

The model, as you state the case, used to be that we’d be uptight and bottled in around our business colleagues and the public at large, only “letting our hair down” with a “few people.” It isn’t that way anymore and I certainly don’t operate that way.

I have become my brand, and those who know my brand know me. I’m a podcaster and an author, I blog frequently and am active in nearly every social network. And anyone who knows me in any of those places knows me, complete and unvarnished. There isn’t anything I hide from anyone.

Anyone in the blogosphere who cares to knows everything about me, from the fact that coffee ice cream is my favorite to the fact that I was sad about losing my job recently as newspapers dissolve.

I have a large listening audience (which I’m contractually obligated not to disclose), 17,000+ friends on MySpace, 1,100+ friends on Facebook, 2,900+ following on Twitter. Which of those would I be sitting down to have coffee with? Well, any of them that ask. Who am I going to glean information from? Build business relationships with? Advance strategic partnerships with? All of them.

Instead of parceling out morsels of information to my close associates, I can now share what I know with anyone who needs to know, and they share theirs with me. Who knows what types of questions I will ask my audience on Twitter? or they ask of me?

It’s become an ebb and flow of constant information, and constant relationships. I expect and hope that these people trust me, as I trust them, because that’s how it works now. I am honest and open and real with everyone in the blogosphere, to the best of my ability.

My connections are WIDE AND DEEP. And no, having 73,000 followers on Twitter isn’t meaningless. It increases the chances that whatever I ask will get answered by someone. That’s huge. It also says to me that those people think that what I have to say has some value. That’s important to me, whether it’s 73,000 or 7 who are really listening.

But, as much as I do consider myself to be a brand, who hopefully one day will make money by my presence and my insight, I sure don’t look at those 73,000 followers as people who can help me “make more money in less time.” For heaven’s sake.

And, frankly, someone like you who was just talking to me because he was looking for a business opportunity “to make more money in less time” would be someone I bounce immediately from my Twitter connections list. Cause that person just doesn’t get it.

First, let me explain.

For those out there who aren’t currently on Twitter, don’t use it, don’t know what it does, what purpose it serves, let me explain that I can hardly imagine a life without Twitter. You add people that seem interesting. They add you if you seem interesting. Social etiquette of Twitter has decreed that if someone follows you, you follow them back. To do otherwise has been deemed rude. 

Out of all the social networks, Twitter was one of the ones I couldn’t imagine living without. In short, it is like a real-world IM service WITH the entire world. Kinda like AOL used to be way back in the early days of the Internet. Where you could tell where the sun was setting and rising by who was logging on. There’s England, now the East Coast, now the Midwest people, now the Californians, etc. Its biggest advantage so far, other than keeping those in your network intimately connected to you, is that you hear REAL time news in real time. The last California earthquake was Twittered, and beat AP’s reporting of it by 20 minutes. That, probably, is the reason I’ll continue to stay on it, cause no one else offers that. 

But, and this is a note to budding social networking gurus out there: when you come up with your great next social network, prepare for growth. Structure it into your business plan. And whatever you foresee for growth, multiply that by ten, and do that. Twitter stumbled badly lately when their servers choked from unexpected exponential growth. They also had a problem with bots creeping in and destroying business. Their answer for all of this was to limit the amount of followers a person could have. However, they didn’t tell anyone this. All of a sudden, you just couldn’t add anyone anymore. The first problem (other than being non-communicative, and what the hell is that for a social network? built on people TALKING to each other?) is that finding anyone to communicate your problem to is next to impossible. Hearing back from anyone is absolutely impossible. I’ve even Twittered directly to both of Twitter’s founders, and have heard NOTHING to this date. 

The second problem is that the whole thing is completely arbitrary. While it’s clear to absolutely everyone who uses Twitter that you are required to speak in bites of 140 characters, it is completely unclear exactly how many followers you can have. Or how many you can follow. At this moment, for example, I’d really like to add my sister, who arrived at Twitter after me. According to what they are telling me, I have to delete followers to add more. But how many? I had 3,106 people that I was following when all this transpired. (1,770 are following me.) Do I need to drop 6? 60? 600? Nowhere is this stated. Many have said to me, why do you need 3000 followers anyway? Why do I need 15,000 friends on MySpace? Why do there need to be limits? How many people are in the world? If I want the ability to talk to all of them, shouldn’t I have that ability? Sure, maybe many will only use Twitter to talk to friends and family, but I have a wide social media circle. The depth and beauty of Twitter is in the variety of people you are talking to, in my estimation. 

I have many more thousands who listen regularly to my podcast. What if every one of them wanted to read my Tweets? They probably couldn’t. It would probably max out Twitter’s system. I communicate with many people. People from all areas of the various social networks I belong to. People from many places all over the world. People I know intimately, and people I just met. Rather like life. Why limit that? Twitter saying, well, it’s set up so that you talk in 140 characters, you should be used to restraint, doesn’t really wash when you are talking about growing your business.

The ideal for any social network is to have as many people talking as possible, isn’t it? To say nothing of all the people IN my social network whom I promote (or promoted) Twitter to, on a daily basis. It’s frustrating, it’s counter-productive, and it’s causing me to use and promote Twitter less. I hope you’re happy, Twitter founders. And I’m going to keep writing and blogging about my dissatisfaction as long as these problems go on. That’s how social networks actually work. Who knows? Maybe someone out there will realize what Twitter’s doing wrong and be able to build the next Twitter. You let me follow as many people as I want, I’ll jump over there in a heartbeat. 

Wow. I think I endured more stress in the past two weeks than I have since I’ve been in California. We are revamping our product totally at work, and it’s been tense. Lots of overtime and such.

So I’m spending the weekend trying to relax, not be in front of a computer screen, be outside enjoying the sunshine. Yet, here I am, listening to Adam Curry’s shows (trying to catch up…I’m so behind on my podcasts…sigh). How did we create this reality? It seems like there is always so much to do, and never enough time to do it all.

I really hope to tape all three shows this weekend, since I’m behind on that too. Or maybe just be good to myself and do nothing but get lots of sleep and eat good food. (Healthy food, not fast food, that is.)

So whatever it is you’re doing right now, I hope that you are treating yourself well, and putting yourself and your life in front of your job. Ya know? Do like I wish I could do, not like I’m actually doing… heh.

Take care, everyone.

–Michelle

PS–I hope someday to figure out how to give Maureen and I both our own separate space here. But learning WordPress is down on my list of priorities. However, if anyone can lend a suggestion, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

In my daily perusal of the Twitterverse today, and the ensuing reading of Scoble’s column, I realized again that not everyone is at the same place I am in the whirl of social media. It still kind of astonishes me when I hear about friends who still don’t have either a MySpace, Facebook or Twitter account, or ALL of them, as I do. (To say nothing of Pownce, Mahalo and all the other ones that are popping up after them.)

Scoble’s assessment is that you are only as strong as the people YOU follow or add as friends on the various sites. I would agree with that. But I would go further to say that media has changed. It is very much a pro-active game now. And WE, as in WE THE PEOPLE, are in control of it now. It’s an essential distinction.

I actually had someone on my friends list on Facebook try to sell me on his new application which featured movies from Paramount that I could add to my site. When he approached me, he explained that people like it ” because it gives them a measure of fame and some contact with Paramount.” I promptly wrote him back, and said, boy howdy, YOU are the one who doesn’t get it here.

We have surpassed Paramount. Why do you think YouTube is so popular? Because Paramount seeded it with its movies, and bowed down to us little people? No. Because WE (we the people) decided what we liked and thought was funny (much as we do in our regular lives) and passed it along to our friends.

And what he was essentially asking me to do, as I pointed out to him, is to pimp out my friends, and blast Paramount’s videos at them. Essentially an ad for Paramount. For FREE. On my page. What does he think I am? Stupid?

So, after I unfriended him, I replied that I don’t do that, and that if he’s working for a social media company, he better get with the way it really works out here in social media land. People are my friends (even on MySpace, where I have close to 15,000 on one account) because I DON’T blast ads at them. Or, if I do, like my choices on iLike on my Facebook account, it’s because I personally think it’s cool. If they choose to click on it, they can decide for themselves.

It is the height of arrogance and a sure way to get unfriended on any social media platform to blast ads at your friends. This is even true on platforms like Second Life. Remember, first and foremost, these are ALL communities.

Sure maybe all 15,000 of my friends aren’t close and personal, but I treat them as if they are. I respect them enough to not sell them crap. And expect the same treatment in return. It’s the unwritten etiquette of the world of social media.

What others who don’t get who aren’t participating in these new worlds yet is that it’s a fabulous way to meet new friends, colleagues, people with like interests. Just respect the turf, man.